Public Health Academia Research Articles

A case study of an academic-stakeholder partnership: Evaluation of the '10000 Lives' smoking cessation health promotion program.

In Australia, smoking prevalence is higher in regional areas than in metropolitan cities; Central Queensland, a central-east district of Queensland, has substantially higher smoking rates than the state average. In November 2017, Central Queensland Public Health Unit (CQPHU) launched the '10000 Lives' initiative to reduce the smoking prevalence in the region. The initiative partnered with local hospitals and community organisations to increase the uptake of interventions like Quitline in the region. Evaluating a program like '10000 Lives' is critical for evidence-based health promotion practice. CQPHU partnered with a large metropolitan Australian university to evaluate the '10000 Lives' through a scheme that provided a stipend for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) student. This narrative report describes the experience of evaluating '10000 Lives' in a collaborative partnership between CQPHU and the public health academia. A PhD student was recruited to join this collaboration, and both developed a program logic model and completed a process and impact evaluation. This evaluation provided an ideal 'living' case study to embed in the Master of Public Health curriculum and provided the PhD student with teaching experience delivering a demonstration of public health in practice. The collaboration project was highly successful, exemplifying research, learning and practical integration for all partners. SO WHAT?: The partnership demonstrated how universities can work with government health agencies to build practice-based evidence, and importantly give public health students authentic learning opportunities.

Testing the total consumption model of alcohol

AbstractSupply‐side interventions to reduce alcohol consumption are often justified by reference to the total consumption model. According to this theory, which is dominant in public health academia, reducing per capita alcohol consumption across society is a sufficient and necessary condition to reduce alcohol‐related mortality. This article presents new evidence showing that there is no single distribution of alcohol consumption and that trends in per capita consumption and alcohol‐related mortality often move in opposite directions. Economic interventions designed to reduce the prevalence of heavy drinking by reducing per capita alcohol consumption cannot therefore be assumed to be effective.

Strengthening collaborations at the public health system-academic interface: a call to action.

In Canada and globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of reliable and responsive public health systems. The pandemic has required decisive leadership and collaboration across all sectors of society informed by the best available evidence. In this commentary, we argue that in order to create a robust public health system equipped to address current and future public health challenges, we must prioritize and invest in stronger relationships between public health practice and academia. We briefly review key recommendations following the SARS outbreak, particularly those calling for stronger linkages between public health academia and practice settings in Canada. We then propose key actions for strengthening these linkages. Echoing other COVID-19-related calls, which request long-term reinvestment in public health education and training, we recommend the following actions: (1) Improve collaboration between education programs and public health agencies to address system needs (e.g., surge capacity) and persisting health inequities; (2) Fund a pan-Canadian public health training initiative that builds on a renewed set of public health competencies to address priority training needs (e.g., equity-oriented leadership); and (3) Prepare a cadre of certified public health leaders who can progress along public health career pathways, including those already in practice.

Building Capacity for Mortality Statistics Programs: Perspectives from the Indonesian Experience

Information on deaths by age, sex, and cause are primary inputs for health policy and epidemiological research. Currently, most developing countries lack efficient death registration systems that generate these data on a routine and timely basis. The global community is promoting initiatives to establish and strengthen national mortality statistics programs across the developing world. Building human, technical, and institutional capacity to operate these programs are essential elements for the program. In Indonesia, the government has established a national Sample Registration System (SRS) covering a population of 9 million and is looking toward further scaling up of operations of the mortality statistics program in conjunction with expansion of the national Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems. This article reports the theoretical and practical perspectives gained from experiences in developing human capacity in the Indonesian context. These perspectives are described in terms of the institutional, personnel, and functional components of the program for collection, compilation, analysis, and utilisation of mortality and cause of death data. The article also describes the challenges and potential solutions for implementing capacity building activities at national and subnational level. In conclusion, the need for and availability of training resources are discussed, including the potential for involvement of public health academia and international collaborations within a research framework on program management, quality evaluation, and data utilisation. Adequate attention to capacity building is essential to ensure the success and sustainability of national mortality statistics programs.

Are Public Health Academia, Professional Certification, and Public Health Practice on the Same Page?

Are Public Health Academia, Professional Certification, and Public Health Practice on the Same Page?

The Public Health Practitioner of the Future.

The requisite capacities and capabilities of the public health practitioner of the future are being driven by multiple forces of change, including public health agency accreditation, climate change, health in all policies, social media and informatics, demographic transitions, globalized travel, and the repercussions of the Affordable Care Act. We describe five critical capacities and capabilities that public health practitioners can build on to successfully prepare for and respond to these forces of change: systems thinking and systems methods, communication capacities, an entrepreneurial orientation, transformational ethics, and policy analysis and response. Equipping the public health practitioner with the requisite capabilities and capacities will require new content and methods for those in public health academia, as well as a recommitment to lifelong learning on the part of the practitioner, within an increasingly uncertain and polarized political environment.

Characteristics of Academic Health Departments: Initial Findings From a Cross-Sectional Survey.

Academic Health Departments (AHDs) represent collaborative relationships between public health academia and practice. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of AHD characteristics, to document the extent of collaboration between organizations in an AHD, and to explore the benefits of AHDs. An electronic survey on the AHD was sent to members of the AHD Learning Community--a virtual learning community with 338 members. There were 110 valid responses to the survey, with 65 indicating they were currently in an AHD partnership. Thirty-two percent of AHDs had been established for more than 10 years; 64% were engaged in joint research activities; and, while 92% of respondents placed a high value on improving the competencies of students, almost half placed a high value on improving the competencies of faculty. This study can be a springboard for further research on the impact of AHDs on practice, academia, and ultimately community health.

Future of Public Workforce Training

The guest editors identified eleven prominent public health thought leaders from practice, academia, professional associations, and philanthropic organizations to be interviewed for their opinions about the future of public health, the skills needed by the public health workforce, and training opportunities and roles. While they spoke from many different perspectives, several overarching themes emerged. The public health workforce needs updated skills. Public health academia should be more engaged in educating and training for public health practice, which would also benefit academia. There is a sense that "now is the time" for public health to be an essential player in the health care system. They see promise in emerging activities such as accreditation, practice-based research, and an explicit national agenda for workforce training. Overall, they are cautiously optimistic about the potential for greater real and perceived value of public health, momentum for more comprehensive, and coordinated public health training.

Promoting Practice in Public Health Academia

This article reviews the activities of an office of public health practice in a school of public health (SPH) and assesses their impact on master's of public health student training and education. The University of Michigan SPH established a Practice Office in 2005 to develop programs in community-based public health, workforce development, student training, and practice-based research. Student training objectives included increasing practice activity offerings and participation rates, ensuring participant satisfaction with activities, and raising the number of students seeking public health practice employment. According to student survey results from the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 academic years, the Practice Office achieved mixed success in meeting objectives. Approximately 50% of students participated in at least 1 activity, nearly 50% of students reported that the activities impacted their decision to pursue a practice career, and approximately 75% of students reported moderate to extensive public health practice experience on graduation, compared with 30% at the beginning of their degree program, although this change was not significantly different for those who had participated in Practice Office activities. Initiation of a systematic process to evaluate the impact of practice-based activities early in program development is recommended for all Practice Offices.

The Prevention of Global Chronic Disease and Academia: Another Key Area?

The recent analytic essay by Greenberg et al. rightfully emphasized the role of the public health academia in preventing global chronic disease.1 The authors focused on key areas such as resource allocation and overcoming barriers to prevention, but paid less attention to academia's crucial role in advancing fresh thinking or innovative models to tackle the epidemic. Two such emerging concepts are Complexity Science (CS) and Allostatic Load (AL) in the causation of chronic diseases.2–5 Our worldview is shifting from mechanistic models to the new CS paradigm. CS perceives social systems (e.g., financial markets) and natural systems (e.g., population health) as emergent properties of open, dynamic, nonlinear, and adaptive systems (i.e., Complex Adaptive Systems [CASs]). Patterns of health and chronic diseases are conceptualized as emergent properties of populations.3 These patterns arise from networks of interactions among dynamic sets of interconnected nonlinear subsystems (e.g., political systems, physical and social environments) that predominantly reside in the latter.6,7 To facilitate changes in a CAS (i.e., health of a population) multiple interventions are required in several subsystems and sectors rather than one magic bullet such as vaccines. Interventions have to be flexible, constantly monitored, and evaluated, and information must be fed back to change the course of intervention. There are few documented reports of CS in health interventions, and a recent report describes its application in an attempt to reduce cardiovascular diseases morbidity and mortality among Canadian Asians.8 Exploring CASs in health will deepen our understanding of how social systems, climate change, human behaviors, and physical environments promote development of chronic diseases in humans and will help us tackle this issue. AL denotes the cumulative wear and tear or the physiological toll experienced by the body over a life course to adapt to biological, psychological, and environmental demands to maintain homeostasis.4 It postulates that chronic diseases are mediated through stress pathways and suggests that stressors of daily living play a role in promoting chronic diseases rather than stemming from a limited set of risk factors.9 Thus, an ordinary social life (as we understand it) may promote chronic diseases over and above what can be explained by the extended life span and traditional risk factors. Because chronic disease affects a majority of the global population, the burden can be substantial. These are just two examples of how fresh thinking and innovative approaches may help us to unravel, understand and contain the epidemic of chronic diseases.

On Academics: Pandemic Influenza Preparedness: Bridging Public Health Academia and Practice

In 2006, the Alabama Department of Public Health, through the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s South Central Center for Public Health Preparedness, sponsored a series of infectious disease outbreak exercises in Alabama’s six hospital planning regions. The six exercises were conducted in rural and metropolitan areas and were designed to be full-scale assessments of multiagency and multijurisdictional responses to an infectious disease outbreak. This article details the lessons learned from the exercises and collaborations of academia with the public health practice and emergency response communities. We provide the results for our qualitative assessment with the hope that this information can identify trends and potential issues applicable to regions and future disasters outside of Alabama. Thus, while these exercises took place in one state, the trends we observed may be generalizable to other locales as well.

Academic Health Departments

In August of 2003, 23 institutions submitted proposals to build closer ties between state and local public health departments and schools of public health in response to a solicitation from the Association of Schools of Public Health supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This article describes the strategies proposed to build collaboration between public health academia and practice. Qualitative analysis discerned five principal approaches: the development of comprehensive planning processes; reform of the way practica are planned and implemented; the identification and nurturing of boundary-spanning individuals in academia and health agencies; the fostering of new approaches to joint research; and workforce development programs. Major themes that emerged included the importance of achieving a balance of power between academic and health department partners; the need to address cultural differences between institutions; a conviction that efforts at institutional change require both strong leadership and the cultivation of boundary spanners farther down the chain of command; and the idea that prospects for success may be improved if faculty and practitioners have tangible incentives to collaborate.

Linking public health academia to public health practice through program evaluation.

Linking public health academia to public health practice through program evaluation.